Episode 7- The "N-Word": Yes, that N-Word

In this episode, Stephanie and her guest Dayle, talk about the “n-word,” the complex relationship that black people have with it and why white people should not say it. Ever.



(Warning: The sources listed below do use the "n-word" even though we don't use it in the episode.)

Here is the media referenced today:

• Here's a great multimedia feature on the "N-Word" by the Washington Post

• Neal A. Lester's article "Straight talk about the "N-Word"

• Blog post on The Undefeated "if you truly knew what the n-word meant to our ancestors, you'd never use it"

• Ta-Nehisi Coates article in the New York Times, "In defence of a loaded word"

• Medium.com article, "the only time white people can say the n-word."

 

This is an advertisement for tobacco from Nigger Hair Smoking Tobacco that was first manufactured by the Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based B. Leidersdorf Company in 1878. According to the company the product was named after "its distinctive, curly Long Cut strands". The product was sold at economic prices and packaged in metal tins with "the head of a negro surmounted with a copious crop of wool, and having a large ring pending from the nose and another from the ear" stamped on the front. Early advertisements for Nigger Hair bore the tagline "Always be a good boy and smoke B. Leidersdorf and Co.'s Nigger Hair".  (Source)

And Then There Were None is a mystery novel by English writer Agatha Christie, her best selling novel and described by her as the most difficult of her books to write. It was first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 6 November 1939, as Ten Little Niggers, after the British blackface song, which serves as a major plot point. (Source)








The pictured license was not issued by the state of Missouri, nor did it provide the holder the legal right to hunt and kill African-Americans. It was a real piece of racist memorabilia (but actually artificially aged), one which was reportedly sold at an annual party thrown by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) called “The Good Ol’ Boys Roundup” in 1995.  They were not. Although the hunting licenses may not have been sold at the Good Ol’ Boys Roundup, nor were they legal documents issued by the state of Missouri, these pieces of racist memorabilia really do exist, and some online stores still sell “federal nigger hunting licenses." (Source)